Urban Agriculture Magazine
April 2003, no. 9

Dear Readers

Many of the increasing group of urban dwellers living around the poverty line are (informal) micro-entrepreneurs, involved in a diversity of activities such as shop-keeping, waste collection and recycling, trading, transport and farming. These entrepreneurs require access to working capital for the maintenance of their investment and for its potential expansion. Urban agriculture is increasingly recognised as a vehicle for the development of more productive, sustainable and inclusive or democratic cities, but most of these urban agricultural producers face limited access to credit and investment schemes.

Financing Urban Agriculture was announced already early 2002 as an forthcoming theme for the UA-Magazine. In 2002, UN Habitat, through its Urban Economy and Finance Branch (at Headquarters in Nairobi) and its Urban Management Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean (UMP-LAC), together with the IDRC (International Development Research Centre, Canada) supported an initiative of documenting and analysing several case studies on credit and investment for urban agriculture. This initiative was further supported with additional cases by RUAF. Some of these cases are described in the UA Magazine no. 7 of the UA Magazine (e.g. the Kenya and Harare cases). Due to some delay in finalising and presenting the research, not all cases were taken up in no. 7 nor was it possible to develop a special UA-Magazine on Financing using these cases for the recent Johannesburg Summit. However, a special of the UA-Magazine was made but focused on the major issue of the Summit: Sustainable Urban Development, and was distributed at the event. It is now planned that the cases on Financing and their analysis will be presented and discussed in an international panel, involving financial institutions and donor agencies (like SGUA members; ethical banks, local governments and credit co-operatives, amongst others). Tentatively, the next World Urban Forum to be held in Barcelona in September 2004 will be the venue for this meeting.

You are invited to contribute to future issues of the Urban Agriculture Magazine. Articles would ideally be up to 2,500 words in length, and preferably accompanied by illustrations (digital and of good quality), references and an abstract. As suggested by the Editorial Board, we welcome your contributions on any subject. Articles will be examined for selection by the editorial team consisting of the RUAF-based responsible editor and the external scientific advisor/co-editor.

The UA-Magazine in Chinese no. 1 and 2 are distributed. The Arabic version of the UA-Magazine no.1 is now ready for distribution, while no 2 is in the making. Readers in those languages are suggested to contact these institutes. The Spanish edition of the UA-Magazine of no. 7 (Economics of Urban Agriculture) is now published, with no. 8. in the making, while the French edition of the UA-Magazine no.6 (Transition to Ecological Urban Agriculture) is distributed.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

The Editor